Does it irritate you when people say that you need religion to be a good person?

Hell yes. I've always believed that religion doesn't define you for who you are. I'm a freethinker and I still love helping people with whatever they need.

I wish more people would say you need to be a good person to have a religion

YES! But it's really the lazy sheeple inside of everyone that feels they need to be told what to do in order to return to God.

Any person willing to search the scriptures and read the words of the prophets and most especially Jesus Himself knows that God did not start a religion. He said that the most important things a person can do are to Love God and Love their neighbor.

It's not about dogma, it's about love... :)

Yes. In fact, I'd go so far as saying you can't be truly selfless if you believe in an afterlife. It cannot be denied that a lot of christians do good deeds for charity, etc, but they do it all for their own desire to get into heaven. This means they do good deeds to get some reward out of it eventually. If an atheist did the same, that would be truly selfless as they are not expecting any reward as atheists do not believe in an afterlife

Religion is bad, but to allow God to know you is good. Birds of the same feathers flock together. Just because a group of people come together in a religious manner are good, some could be poisonous. Open your eyes.

It irritates that part of me that processes common sense information. You know, like when you see someone going through a door that says PULL and they keep pushing. You say, "It says PULL" and they push harder. After the initial laughter, it begins to get annoying because what they are doing is an assault on common intelligence.

You don't need religion to be a good person, that suggests that any religion makes you a good person.

No, because it is both true and false at the same time. Religion is man's attempt to reach up to God. Grace is God's attempts to reach down to us. Christianity is a system of grace. All other religions are truly religion - man's attempt to reach up to God. But, Christianity does get lumped in with religions because it is a belief system about God.

So I would refine that statement by saying that you need God's grace to be a good person. Why? Because all of us are born into this world with an inclination towards self-absorption and self-centeredness. And those are our only true naturally occurring motivations within us. And from these motivating factors we may do all manner of good, but we will do so in order to feel good about ourselves, to make ourselves look good, or to further our own causes that we believe in.

Good in God's eyes is only acceptable if we are motivated out of a genuine love for God and a desire to please Him, and a selfless love for others that indeed is so selfless that it even reaches out in love to one's enemies. And because this kind of love is truly divine in nature, then it can only be accomplished by divine power within us. And that requires that we be made new in our spirit by the Spirit of God, or, in the words of Jesus, that we be "born again" by the Spirit.

And so, yes, we can do good things for all the wrong reasons, and feel good about ourselves, but yet not impress God at all. Or we can do good things for motivations that are generated within us by the Spirit of God, and therefore are pleasing to Him. And so you can do good things without God, but you cannot truly be a good person without the grace of God in Jesus Christ.

No. I don't care enough about ignorant people to waste energy being irritated. I just laugh, say some big sciency words, and walk away with my middle finger in the air.

A religion is the set of rules by which you live.

If you don't have any rules & standards,

Then you need some direction for life.

Yes it does. People say that without religion, we would all be immoral. This is complete bs. There are people who are religious who are very bad people and people who are not religious who are very good people. If people want to be good, they will be. Their religion, or lack of religion, will not effect this.